The first COVID-19 vaccinations began on Saturday in Germany at a retirement home in the Sachsen-Anhalt region in the east of the country, the honor having been reserved for a centenary.
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Edith Kwoizalla, 101, resident of this center located in Halbertstadt, was the first to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, her manager Tobias Krüger told AFP, confirming German media information.
In all, around 40 residents and 10 healthcare workers are to be vaccinated on Saturday, one day before the official launch of the campaign scheduled for Sunday across the country and in other states of the European Union.
“For us, every day counts,” Immo Kramer, an officer of the vaccination center in this region, told public broadcaster MDR.
On Saturday, several tens of thousands of doses of the vaccine were delivered to regional health authorities, who distributed them to local vaccination centers.
Residents of nursing homes, seniors over 80 and caregivers will be the first to be immunized.
“This vaccine is the essential key to defeating the pandemic. It is the key that will allow us to reclaim our own lives, ”Health Minister Jens Spahn said at a press conference earlier today.
At the same time, he called on the youngest to be patient and to continue reducing contact to limit the spread of the pandemic.
Defeating the virus “will be a long-term job”, he warned. But “autumn, winter and (the holidays) Christmas next year should no longer be placed under the sign of this pandemic”, he promised.
Germany, which had resisted the virus rather well in the spring, was hit hard by the second wave of COVID-19 and had to reintroduce partial containment, at least until January 10.
According to the latest figures released on Saturday by the Robert Koch Institute for Public Health Surveillance (RKI), the country recorded 14,455 new cases in 24 hours, while 240 people have died, bringing the total number of deaths to 29,422 since the start. of the pandemic.
But they should be reassessed upwards: the institute said it had not received all the data from the regions due to the Christmas holidays.
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